Epilogue
“Winnie was so pleased to be able to see all the ladies in their ballgowns, wasn’t she?” Frances laughed, looking to Ambrose as she told Beatrice and Lydia of her little stepdaughter.
Winifred had been allowed to stay up late with her governess and sit on the upper landing, watching through the bannisters as the guests for Frances’ first Westall Park ball arrived.
“She was very happy indeed,” Ambrose agreed, lightly squeezing his wife’s waist. “I expect she will draw some of them for us tomorrow.”
“I shall save my flowers for Winnie,” Beatrice announced, touching the small nosegay pinned to her white dress. “Ah, Captain Elverton, I would love to dance, thank you.”
Lydia too was soon swept off with a partner and Lord and Lady Scovell were already dancing. Among the couples of their age they were the lightest on their feet, and for affection they could easily rival twenty-something newlyweds. It no longer pained Frances to see her parents like this.
Now she was both able to recognize love and appreciate that lovers did not need to be perfect, nor the road of love entirely straight. Nor were there enemies to be feared or avoided in the ton any more.
Lord Mulford had gone to South America a few weeks after his trespass at Scovell House.
Miss Sinclair, meanwhile, was reportedly banned from London by her family for the foreseeable future.
With Ellen Yates carousing in Italy with the Duke of Redford, and little chance of finding a maid as competent and morally flexible, Annabelle Sinclair found her ambitions and activities rather curtailed.
Circulating among their guests, Frances was ever conscious of Ambrose at her side, from breathing in the scent of his cologne and feeling the solidity of his arms, to hearing and appreciating his easy conversation and light humor.
A year ago, she would have thought it impossible to love a man as she loved him.
Each time she turned to kiss his cheek, or pressed his arm with her hand, she wondered how many others in the room felt the same about their spouses.
How many other women were looking forward as much as Frances to being alone with their husbands in a locked bedroom after the dance.
.? Her eyes shone as they caught Ambrose’s gaze.
“What are you thinking about, Duchess Frances?” he asked in a low and mischievous tone, bending down to her ear. “Surely not still what I did twice with my tongue this morning before I finally took you?”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking of that,” Frances admitted with a pleasurable sigh.
“You read Winnie a bedtime story,” Ambrose pointed out. “That must have provided some distraction.”
“Yes, I read the story but all the while she was telling me that you would be the most handsome and well-favored man at the ball and I was agreeing with her.”
They laughed together for a few moments before the opening bars of a waltz sounded.
“Ah, this one is our dance,” stated Ambrose. “I know you were too tired for the reel or the country dance but there’s only one woman I ever want to waltz with.”
Putting his arms around Frances, he spun her onto the dance floor.
Despite the autumn chill, the ballroom at Westall Park felt very warm to Frances that night as they twirled and spun together. Were there too many people in the room? Too many candles lit? Or had Frances only danced too many dances with her handsome husband..?
Her dress felt rather tight too and perhaps the champagne had gone to her head. For a moment, the room spun too and Frances clutched at Ambrose’s arms. She really must sit down a while after this dance…
As Ambrose twirled Frances one more time in the closing bars, the world went completely black.
When she opened her eyes again, Ambrose had carried her to a bench in the conservatory and Lord and Lady Scovell were hovering over her in a worried fashion, the latter fanning her face and the former wondering whether he ought to find smelling salts from someone.
“You fainted,” Ambrose said gently as Frances came back to herself.
“I was so hot all of a sudden,” Frances said and pulled at the cord of her dress to ease her neckline. “Perhaps I should have worn a summer dress, but I thought this one was fairly loose. Oh, my.”
“Should I find a physician?” worried Lord Scovell, but his wife patted him reassuringly on the arm with a knowing smile.
“I believe it’s nothing so serious and I’ve seen it before. Why don’t you go and get us all a table in the supper room? Ambrose and I will bring Frances through when she feels better.”
“Might you be you expecting?” Lady Scovell asked once her anxious husband was gone.
For a few seconds, Frances could not think what her mother meant by this question, especially when spoken in such a simultaneously excited and confidential voice. Then she looked at Ambrose’s loving smile and she knew.
“I might be,” Frances realized aloud, reaching for her husband’s hand as she ran through her symptoms in her head.
“Is that why you’ve been wanting breakfast later in the mornings?” Ambrose suggested and Frances laughed.
“Maybe. I don’t feel exactly sick in the mornings but I have no appetite until later.”
No appetite in the morning, tiredness, sudden faintness with exertion, larger breasts…
“What about your monthlies, have they stopped?” her mother added.
“I don’t know,” Frances replied, unable to remember when she had last bled, the last few months having been such a busy whirl of newly married life and love at every opportunity.
Ambrose nodded, however.
“You haven’t bled for months, Frances,” he confirmed. “I did wonder but I was waiting for you to say something.”
“I’m going to have a baby, aren’t I?” said Frances, with incredulity, and then joy as both her mother and husband nodded. “We’re going to have a child, Ambrose!”
“I’ll go and join your father,” Lady Scovell said discretely, leaving them to talk alone after Frances stood and went to Ambrose’s arms. “Come and join us for supper when you’re ready.”
“How can this be?” Frances wondered aloud, causing a guffaw from her husband.
“I shall remind you after the ball, if you wish,” he offered, dropping light kisses on her face as Frances laughed too. “I cannot have done things properly this morning if you have forgotten already.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” she returned, poking him affectionately in the chest. “I mean our marriage, this, us, and now our child too. I thought for so long I would be alone forever, alone and untouched. I never thought I would have a husband or a family. But now everything is changed completely.”
“We have become a family,” Ambrose told her with a fuller kiss. “You, me, Winnie and the new baby. As arranged marriages go, this one has been rather a success, don’t you think?”
Frances linked his arm and they began to walk through the conservatories and towards the supper room.
“If you were only willing to marry me, and I was only willing to marry you, was it really ever an arranged marriage at all?” she wondered aloud. “It sounds a lot more like falling in love, when you think about it like that, doesn’t it?”
“A love match, arranged ourselves, to our mutual satisfaction,” the Duke of Westall suggested and they laughed together as they rejoined the crowds.
The End?